Coming of age in the late 70's meant, as a queer man, I enjoyed the golden age of gay sexuality: discos, bathhouses, and a new feeling of freedom to enjoy the harvest of both the gay liberation and the free love movements.

Living in the 1980s meant facing my own and my community's mortality.

In 1981 AIDS hit with headlines and panic in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, in the pages of Newsweek, if not in the White House. The country was fearful of just what the scope of this new epidemic would be. The fear was well justified: since 1981 almost a half million American's have died of complications from AIDS. We now live in a country where it's estimated that 850,000 to 950,000 now have HIV. Although there has been progress in treating HIV/AIDS, there is still no cure.